A snowstorm slammed coastal New England, including Boston, on Sunday and was heading for eastern Maine and Atlantic Canada, meteorologists said.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning on Sunday for Boston, Cape Cod, Nantucket and surrounding areas, saying that gusty winds, low visibility and up to 8 inches of snow were expected.

If the storm had been further west, it would have caused a serious blizzard, but instead it was brushing extreme eastern New England, sparing areas like New York City and Connecticut, which were buried in a snowstorm earlier this month, said Mark Paquette, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.

"It will cause headaches, but it could have been a lot worse," Paquette said.

The storm in the Northeast is the same one that brought snow to North Carolina and South Carolina on Saturday, AccuWeather.com said. It's not expected to be as destructive as the deadly Northeast blizzard two weeks ago that brought hurricane-force winds and left hundreds of thousands without power. That's in part due to colder temperatures causing drier snow, which is less likely to stick to trees and cause limbs to fall into power lines, Paquette said....click reuters.com link for more